In the mid-to-late 1800s, French writers and artists resolved to shed their
Romantic skins in favor of new self-conscious “husks”--to borrow Baudelaire’s poetic
term--that is to say: Naturalism, Realism, Impressionism and Symbolism. Some of the
older reformers found themselves in an awkward, transitional stage contrary to the
younger vanguardists who bore no allegiance to the past. The first group included
Baudelaire, Flaubert, Courbet, Manet, Degas and Pissarro while the latter listed among its
most successful members: Zola, Mallarmé, Huysmans, Morisot, Monet, Renoir and
Cézanne.
This thesis argues that specularity--a sort of mirror mimesis--was part of the
fertile, artistic exchange between these representative writers and artists who shaped
nineteenth century French literature and plastic arts during a period of turbulent social
and political change. It is important not to conventionalize specular-mimesis into an
automatic looking glass response between literature and art. Its primary function in this
thesis is to single out, investigate and inter-relate literary and artistic chefs-d’oeuvre
which, at times, bear remarkably similar hallmarks, for one reason or another. Given that cultivated conversation was highly esteemed by the Parisian
bourgeoisie and held to be an elegant art form by salon and soirée intellectuals, four
Dialogues constitute the internal structure of this paper. Each Dialogue is preceded by its
own Cadre which serves to introduce and familiarize the reader, using a mise-en-scene
framework, with background information that supports the discourse.

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